Search Engines and Google Rules[agreement].

[tinkerdan]

I sometimes have to do some insane searches on google for my work.
Often, if I don't get the English correct and I have to page through a number of google pages before I decide to rephrase.

Anyway, apparently my paging through is so awesome I look like an automated process and I suddenly got blocked by google for suspicious activity violating their agreement. They gave me a chance to prove I was human with a captia; however they followed that with a weird line of code that they wanted me to cut and paste into their little box.(And they say I look suspicious). However part of their warning stated that there was possibly weird code being sent from my network.

In the final analysis I opted out of that and went to yahoo for my search, since I didn't want to go to another computer and discover that it was also blocked.

Has anyone else ever had that happen.

I swear we don't use software to do our searches, its all just us humans; however I have gotten to where I can scan a page of potentials quite fast--I don't think I'm as fast as an automated process though.

On a related note:
I've been using search engines for thirty years now and one thing I have noticed is that search results recently are increasingly irrelevant to the search criteria and I can fully understand someone wanting to find a way to optimize the results from the allegedly optimized search engines.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've had that happen a few times before. It can especially happen if you're on a dynamic IP that can be easily abused by other people with your ISP (I found British Telecom IP's commonly blacklisted online), and it can also happen if you do searches for "sensitive" keywords that a bot or other script might be using to search for websites running vulnerable legacy software for hacking purposes.

 

[Dave]

Has anyone else ever had that happen.

Yes, I've had it before when scrolling through search results like you described, but only once, and a long time ago. It sounds like the procedure for proving you are not a bot has got tighter and more complicated since.

As you also described, the search algorithms have been altered so much now, that even when doing advanced searches you often do need to go to third or fourth pages to find what you require. If you make a lot of searches and you skim through those particularly fast then you must appear to be non-human to them. They also place advertisers first to the detriment of all those little home-made websites that I used to enjoy surfing once upon a time. It also infuriates me that they keep changing spellings, "Did you mean....?" and continue to do it even when you use boolean logic to minus that particular spelling.

 

[mosaix]

More reasons to stop using google.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

More reasons to stop using google.

Concerned about Google's intrusiveness/filter bubble?

Use these instead

DuckDuckGo — Privacy, simplified.

The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs.

duckduckgo.com

Startpage - Private Search Engine. No Tracking. No Search History.

Search and browse the internet without being tracked or targeted. Startpage is the world's most private search engine. Use Startpage to protect your personal data.

www.startpage.com

Qwant

The 1st European search engine that respects your privacy.

lite.qwant.com

 

[mosaix]

Been using DuckDuckGo for as long as I can remember.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Been using Bing for years. Nice new pictures everyday, plus when signed in I earn a Tesco voucher every few months.

 

[Artoriarius]

I had that problem on Project Gutenberg once, rather than a regular search engine—I was looking for a number of works in multiple tabs, switching between tabs as they loaded—and apparently that looked close enough to a bot for Gutenberg to block me. Honestly, I was mostly bemused by the whole thing; it is the first time a computer ever accused me of being a robot.

Which I am clearly not. Obviously. It is a ridiculous allegation, and I am just as flawed and obsolete as any other fleshy meatsack in the room.

 

[tinkerdan]

We have a static IP address and when they use the IP address for blocking that causes a s**t storm here.
However this time they just blocked either the computer or the browser. The particular computer I use for most browsing is a Vista OS and since everyone started dropping support long ago I have to use a non-standard browser and that might be what they are flagging.
It was a relief they only blocked the one computer/browser because otherwise I'd start getting a slew of complaints from everyone using google search if they blocked the IP.

I'm also IT here so, though it has been a while; I have had to call google in the past and ask them to unblock us since we are running a business here and we would like to continue to conduct business without the interruptions.